The BEST PDF TOOLS for Linux: merge, edit, create, annotate, OCR...

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#pdfeditor #linux #pdf

00:00 Intro
00:26 KasmVNC: the best remote desktop option on Linux
01:21 The Default tools kinda suck
02:22 Editing a PDF
05:14 Manual Signature of a PDF
06:47 Digitally Signing a PDF
08:49 Optical Character Recognition of a PDF
10:17 Hand Written Annotations on a PDF
11:08 Modifying pages and merging PDFs
11:53 Creating a PDF
13:05 Parting thoughts
13:39 Sponsor: Get a PC designed to run Linux with Tuxedo
14:29 Support the channel

How to edit a PDF document:

One tool that is probably already on your Linux desktop is LibreOffice Draw. It can open PDF documents, and edit them, as long as it's not an image.

If you're familiar with vector drawing programs, then Inkscape can also edit PDF documents. For more robust solutions, you have proprietary commercial solutions, including PDF Studio, Master PDF, Foxit PDF Editor, or WPS Office, but you'll have to pay for them.

How to manually sign a PDF:

Okular can actually do that. You can use the manual drawing tool to write your signature, or you can add the ability to paste an image on top of a document, but it's convoluted. You have to go to settings, toolbars shown, enable the quick annotations toolbar, then click the "configure button", click "Add", select the type "Stamp", and click the little button next to the "stamp symbol" field, to pick your own hand drawn signature that you previously saved as an image. Afterwards, you can just add that to any document in one click from that quick annotations toolbar.

You can also open the PDF document in LibreOffice Draw or the GIMP, and add your image signature this way.

How to digitally sign a PDF:

The easiest way is to use LibreOffice. Open the LibreOffice suite, click File, then digital signatures, and then "sign existing PDF", then the "sign document" button at the top. It will list all the available existing signatures and certificates you have installed on your device, and you can pick the one you want.

By default, LibreOffice will look into Mozilla Firefox's certificates list, so you'll have to put your certificate file there. To do so, open FIrefox, then the main menu, Preferences, Privacy and Security, and then "View Certificates". Then click on "authorities" and "Import", and then the "OK" button, and you're done.

Optical Character Recognition (OCR)!

A simple option is GImageReader, an open source app that will let you import a document or image, and will recognize all the text inside, in a very large variety of languages. It can take a while to do its thing, but it works reliably, and it was able to extract text from scanned PDFs and images like a PNG.

If you prefer doing these tasks from the command line, then you have Tesseract OCR, which is actually what GImageReader uses in the background.

How to annotate a PDF:

Your best option is probably Xournal++. It lets you open PDF documents, and draw all over them. You can highlight text, add hand drawn notes, shapes, type some text. It can even handle equations and graphs, and has a very customizable interface.

How to modify pages, split and merge PDF documents:

If all you need is modifying the pages in a PDF document, like reordering them, or deleting them, then you have PDF Arranger, a simple GNOME app that will run on any Linux desktop, and is available on Flathub.
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As a side note, Firefox has some basic PDF editing capabilities, this may be enough for most people.

Blueeeeeee
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I cant stress enough how this is one of the most important things to know when using linux

middyjohn
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Awesome video, Nick. It shouldn't be so hard to work with PDFs, yet here we are. Thanks for helping us find good tools for working with them.

whiskeyshots
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I'm a Windows user who is dabling in Linux through Mint on an old laptop. Your videos have been an excellent resource. So thank you. If all of the games out there ran on Linux, I would probably use it as my main desktop. Alas, it is not so.

shadushio
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I really love this type of content of yours because one, its really helpful for not only beginners who don't know what applications to use to accomplish certain tasks in Linux, and two, the effort you put in to research, use and test those applications is really amazing 💓

sifatullah
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I work a lot with pdf on linux and your suggestions are good:
- pdf arranger is powerful and xournal++ too although the menus organisation is a nightmare
- but both should permit to compress the result the best tool I found to compress is edited by itsfoss and called PDF-Compressor but the ergonomy is poor. The top would be a tool with an output file size parameter.
Thank you for this great lesson over the certificates.

tmaes
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I created my signature in inkscape. I signed a piece of white paper and photographed it. Then I turned it into a vector graphic in inkscape. You only have to do it once and it will work for almost any form. Vector graphics can be made any size without degrading.

scpatlnow
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In Spain digital signatures are a must if you are a company and optional for citizens. Once you're set up, no matter how difficult it were, you realise how convenient digital signatures are and often people stick to them. The Spanish Government keeps Autofirma as a multiplatform, Java-bassed signing application, but no editing tools are included. PDF is the de facto standard, as you guessed.

JaumeSabater
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I find Master PDF to be the best PDF viewer and editor on Linux. I bought it for one year and was very happy with it. Formatting was perfect and it even opened government of Canada documents that specifically said they require Adobe Acrobat. No other program could open them. Master PDF is the winner for me.

TheBigBazzy
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Just about a month ago, I found out that Okular can open and display markdown files too. As someone who writes basically everything in markdown (or LaTeX), I make use of Okulars markdown capabilities all the time.

Who needs a office suite if you have a Texteditor and markdowns am I right 😅.

IamTheHolypumpkin
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A bit surprised that Scribus wasn't mentioned as PDF editor, not just for creating them. Used it in this role a few times during uni

MrMediator
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Sejda PDF (desktop or online) is a great tool. The free version limits the number of files you could work on per day, but the wide range of functionality is there...

bacalaoporto
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For rearranging PDFs, change metadata (data of creation, for example), rotate pages, merge or split documents, etc., you also have PDF Mix Tool. And of course, for the command line enthusiasts there is also PDFtk.

video-rgb-es
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Hey - somebody did his signing homework! As mentioned below - the most easy and usually not too bad viewer is your webbrowser. What I heared is that edge (uuuh) does a pretty good job here.
The remaining issues like cluttered layout after import to tool XY is not a Linux specific problem. One has to deal with the same mess on Windows or MacOS. Usually the PDF source is the problem here. Text often is positioned letter by letter or even converted to curves. It all comes down to the engine used for creating the pdf file. At least the aera of full page bitmaps seems to be over. And if you want to extract Text from the PDF - the command line and poppler pdf2text is your best friend!

SingasongAoC
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LibreDraw (LD) is a good tool. The biggest issue is, if you do not have the fonts installed on the system that are used in the PDF document, it can throw off the formatting (as alluded to in the OP). Documents created in Mac are the biggest headache because they often use mountains of bizarre unuseual fonts in a single document. As mentioned in the OP, paragraphs are presented as single lines, which is how PDF renders documents. Witih LD, you can select multiple lines and merge them into a single paragraph (text box). If you have the document fonts installed, you're golden, otherwise be prepared to do some tweeking.

PhilipCrichton
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I use macs for laptops and Linux on the desktop and any time i've had to mess with PDFs, i've always just used my macbook. Preview is one of those included mac apps that is really nice and AFAIK, nothing like that is included out of the box on Windows either (although tbh, I haven't used Windows in a while thank goodness).

Watchandlearn
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One use case is if you want to do an image-only PDF (i.e. converting CBR or CBZ comic book to PDF to use on an e-reader device that doesn't accept those formats). In that case there's no easier solution than the CLI tool img2pdf which is quick and easy to find in apt. That and PDF Arranger can get you pretty well sorted out in that case.

mausmalone
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Hi Nick, as a longtime Master PDF user I must orrect your comment about a one time payment. In reality the payment covers application updates for 1 year only, however by going into settings the user can turn off update searches. This is useful because if you update having just passed your years subscription you'll need to pay for a further year. Having said that I find Master PDF to be an excellent tool and recommend it.

jesuisjamaiscontent
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I think it would have been helpful to focus on any proprietary tools for Linux, too. I'm a big fan of PDF Studio from Qoppa software - the UI is a bit clunky, but it Just Works. It covers almost every use case in the video in one app. Proprietary and paid software - but I think that we shouldn't expect all of our tools to be free, and there are benefits to showing that Linux users will pay for value.

jhirschma
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In Costa Rica, digitally signing documents with a certificate is something that you do need to do rather often, but thankfully there are tools to do that easily on Linux.
I think they are adapted to our laws so I don't know if they would work on other countries that use digital signatures.

AschKris